I HAVEN'T WRITTEN anything here because not a lot has gone on. I didn't have a good Xmas, really. Or a happy new year. I don't know, I must have been depressed, or sick, or something. I don't know. Hey I just got a comment saying I was delusional because I thought I could get in print. Well... maybe I am, maybe not. Fiction writing is not like blogging. Everything goes through at least two drafts, if not five, six or seven. Here I just tap it in and press publish; there I weigh every word. Fiction is about characterization and dialogue. Blogging is just me reporting every turd I've done. My fiction, you might argue, is just a literary turd ~ and a real steamer of a sloppy one at that! They have almost nothing in common, so you can't really assess my ability to write novels by reading my blog. Anyway I haven't written anything for about a month. I finished my first (short) novel in computer-ready form and almost instantly spiralled into depression so bad I couldn't focus enough to weigh up two versions of the same short passage, to work out which should go into book two. I don't know why I got like that. My GP wanted to up the meds by another hundred milligrams, but I don't want even more antipsycho tabs. The ones I'm on are causing enough side-effects as it is. Er, I don't know what else to say. I feel like I'm under seige. I have this feeling that I need a guard dog. I saw the most beautiful doggie on the Australian Animal Rescue programme. At first glance I thought she was a St Bernard. She was really cute, but she had been bitten by a snake and they couldn't save her. So she died. And she was one of the most beautiful dogs I have ever seen. And she wasn't a St Bernard, she was an Akita. I have always wanted an Akita puppy but have never seen them for sale. I have this daydream that one day a stray will come looking for me, and that will be my sign. An akita puppy. See how cute it is..?? Though I think this one, with the sawn-off legs look, is something of a crossbreed... I must go. Hope everyone's all right... Hachiko monogatari: the tale of Hachiko, the faithful dog who never stopped looking for his master...
I'VE JUST SEEN a leather 3-piece sofa I really like. Real leather. Just apply shoe polish to improve that dynamic sheen... Charity shop said they'd do it without the matching chairs for £95 ($145.93) (it's £195 ($299.54) with 2 matching leather armchairs...) I said I can't put down a deposit now. I spent my last 30p (46c) on a Spanish novel called El misterio de la cripta embrujada ("The Mystery of the Haunted Crypt") by Eduardo Mendoza. With the aid of my trusty Collins Spanish Dictionary and copious notebooks plus an entire pack of blue biros with which to copy out every single word I don't know or cannot guess ~which will be about 20,000 words!~... but when I've done this in German, my vocabulary expanded by leaps and bounds. I'm also looking out for the defunct and undeservedly out of print Penguin Book of Spanish Verse. + I also want the German and French versions. Poetry, they say, is the very best way of picking up a foreign language. Great for improving the vocabulario and nice and succinct. These Penguin books come complete with prose translations, so the need for three hulking great dictionaries is obviated.
Oh by the way did you know the Spanish word for "dark" is oscuro ~ as in obscure. Never knew that one...
Well I've just come back from visiting the nuthouse. Yet again. My mind is humming. Also the loud Scouse House I'm listening to isn't helping. I was in such a bad, paranoid, irritable mood this afternoon. Effing and blinding at every little thing. Depressed this morning. Hyper in the evening> at least Binky says I am. She says she can tell when I'm going into a "manic" one by the sudden addition of liberal sprinklings of the word Glodemer into my conversation. Glodemer being the name of our late doggie who had the sweetest nature of any doggie I have never known and looked like a seal with mottled silvery grey and black fur. I was absolutely gutted when she died of status epilepticus ~ constantly fitting out for hours and hours until her body just gave out. (This was all brought on by puppyhood distemper.) My parents kept saying they might have to have her put to sleep, but nature took its course before human intervention and she died under the cherry tree in our massive garden. A snow of white blossoms against infinite blue sky. The Japanese say cherry blossoms symbolize the all-too-terrible briefness of life. It was very sad. I felt much more upset over the death of this dog than any of my friends. Except one ("Lucky"). Can't believe Lucky went and died. She just keeled over and her organs failed one after another. Like a power blackout in a big city where you see block after block going dark. So she died. Anyway glodemer is my name for "cute". Japanese かわいい kawaii.
Binky is talking about my going into the emergency psycho clinic if I don't come down soon. I told her when I did go into ultra ultra hyperacute mania more than 2 years ago now, it took a good couple of weeks to get from where I am now (just moody) into extreme elevation with auditory and visual trippings and full-blown confusionality. I'm not anything like that now. It does sound like my carrier bags are whispering mysterious phrases at me as they rustle, but that's just me living out a children's book. Where deep in the enchanted forest trees have great gnarled faces and steam trains puff out exclamations like "Ready to go! Ready to go!" Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone. I hear you call my name. And it feels like home.
That's Madonna, darling.
Eddy : "Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone."
Saffy : "That's lovely."
Eddy : "Yeah, I hear you call my name and it feels like home."
Saffy : "Who said that ?"
Eddy : "Its Madonna, darling."
I can't remember what else I was going to put. Oh yes the bed scandal! My Dad is trying to deliver me a bed and just as he was trying to text me a junk mail text came through offering "great deals on both, 3 for £20, 4 for £25..." which I promptly ignored (it having seemingly booted my Dad's text out of my phone) and so I missed the delivery. Of the actual mattress. Because I was two annoying minutes from my house. (I think it is a mystically self-inflating mattress malarky thingie...) Bloody ridiculous. My family are fretting that it might never get delivered and go pinging off into some hyper-conscious censorious vortex of hyperspace where all the missing full-stops congregate in a great H-bomb fusion of transcendently transmogrified unaccented unaccounted accumulated power. Something like that. You know, the space in the Twilight Zone where all the Missing Socks find their long-lost loves. You know: their Sock Partners... Something like that. But It Shall Come. It Will Be Delivered. All Shall Be Fine. Glodemer said so.
Well the weather here in London Town is still lovverly... I don't know. It felt horrid and cold this morning. But this afternoon FEEEEELLLS about 85F. I don't know that it is really that hot but it's such a fantastic evening. Charming as a Chelsea Bun, sweet as a Danish pastry. Curly as an Akita's tail...秋田犬 And just as Glodemer Furry.
Well I've got to go. Knowing my luck UPS are trying to deliver my dhinghy-bed RIGHT NOW!!!
HELLO EVERYONE. I'm moving house! Tomorrow I sign a 12-month tenancy agreement on a one-bed council flat. It's in just about the nicest location I could ask for; not "inner city", yet close to everything. Providing all goes well and I'm not antisocial (never have been in the past) this will be transformed into a lifelong and permanent tenancy ~ I can even leave it to my next of kin. Far as I know, I get from tomorrow afternoon until next Monday to move all my stuff out of the old place and to get gas, electricity, etc turned on (I have no idea how to do this: at the present house the amenities were running anyhow).
Once they take the metal anti-squatter blinds off my windows, I'll have a much better idea of what's going on. Basically I'm moving into a completely unfurnished concrete box with no carpets, nothing. I'm not even sure the old tenants left the curtain rails up. So I'm in a flap about furniture: what to get from where and how. I did find a beautiful 3-seat beige sofa for £60 + £10 delivery but of course it's sold. The charity shop has another one just as big but nowhere near as nice and it's £10 MORE. I so hate second best I'd rather go elsewhere... if only I knew somewhere, ANYWHERE selling used furniture. Apart from food and essentials, I haven't really gone shopping in London EVER. I never had money for luxuries. (I never had a LIFE! (And then of course I ruined what life I had with Heroin)...)
Well I'm really excited to be moving and I so wish I could find a nice long sleep-on-able sofa like that one that has just been sold. Of course it's still there in the shop, staring me in the face. I can't bear to go in there and look at second best.
As for this ridiculous bath situation, nothing is happening about that, for now. I'm trying to fix the problem myself, by investing in stuff that SHOULD keep me properly clean in the shower. Many months ago I ended up shopping with Valium Marilyn for a new flannel (washcloth if you prefer) and NOWHERE we looked had them. Well yesterday I furnished myself not only with washcloths but a giant sponge + professional back-scrubber. I'm determined to get a grip on this ridiculous, embarrassing issue of "self-care". I have a psychiatric condition known as CBS ~ childish bathing syndrome (or nonbathing syndrome). With this £3.50 ($5.53) investment in professional accoutrements, I SHOULD be able to get and keep my rotting body fresh.
I think the council were just being picky when they said I wasn't even allowed to PAY to get a bath in until my tenancy goes permanent. I looked into the costs nonetheless and the nearest bathroom shop to me sells baths from £70 with installation costing very little. I have to come back with precise dimensions. The standard bath lengths are 120cm, 140cm and 160cm. Got a feeling mine's gonna have to be 120. I don't MIND paying I just want that bath PUT IN.
I'm very excited to be moving. To be getting a place of my own. Finally. Where PETS ARE ALLOWED. So I can have my Baby Chirper without fear of eviction.
Well I have to go soon. I'm exhausted because yesterday evening Binky had to go back into the mental hospital for the FIFTH TIME in 12 months. We rode there in a cab, 3 of us, including the support manager at the halfway house where Binky lives. She was very confused, talking about a very upsetting paranoid experience she keeps having. She had seen a psychiatrist that day, so it was arranged that she should present herself at the Emergency Clinic. At first the clinic were very accommodating: a ginger nurse fully au fait with the matter assured her she was being admitted with a 98% chance of going where she went last time, where she knows everyone.
Three hours passed and the evening shift appeared. When Binky eventually asked what was going on, the very surly African nurse who had control of the airlock-style door which we had to ask permission to be opened so we could go for cigarettes said through the plate glass (for there is no window, no hatch through which you can talk to the staff; they don't WANT to hear anything you have to say) "well you seem to have got a lot better than you were when you turned up here". On hearing which Binky flipped her lid. The new shift started saying they were waiting for assessment by the Home Treatment Team. Which they weren't, because the HTT had already stated that she needed to be admitted. But she still waited until well past 11:30 until the bed manager could come up with something.
I left at 9:15 on the pretext of shopping for takeaway. But I just couldn't handle the stress any more.
Talking of stress I don't know HOW I'm going to move into this new flat. My Mum is right in the middle of moving house herself. I rang my present landlord's henchman and asked whether he'd be willing to give me and my stuff a "lift" in his van and he said hopefully he could, that I should phone back tomorrow. It's up to his boss to say yes. They have no reason to help me... but hey, miracles do happen.
One last thing: DRUGS. HEROIN. I wanna keep the new place DRUG-FREE, which means no celebratory hit as soon as I'm all unpacked and free, leaning against my new front door. No drugs. Just the horrible methadone until the bitter end.
I think I'm going to be OK. Last week, it has to be said, I was feeling pretty horrible a lot of the time. For the last couple of days I've felt a lot better. I'm just really really tired and have to conserve my energy for house-moving. Wish me luck! ☺
PARROTLET TRICKS
This is the type of bird I want. A parrotlet is basically a posh lovebird...
ALL THIS STRESS I have gone through: what if I get a birdie and the landlord finds out and tells me to get rid of it... Well I distinctly remember the contracts I've signed NOT CONTAINING any no pets clauses. And anyway, it would be difficult to prove a lovebird or two could ever be a nuisance. Of course I'm going to let it fly about free. I think bird cages are places for birdies to eat, sleep and peck at the bars. And to go to the vets in. Not to be confined all day when you're at home.
So I looked up some stuff about how to train your birds. And found this:
Pet birds (little ones) flying freely outside...
To be honest, I think a person would be crazy to do this with little birds like lovebirds.
Lovebirds down the park:
Zebra Finches fluttering in from the garden:
Teach a parrot to fly. (I would love to know what type of bird this is, he's beautiful.)
HERE'S the theme tune I was telling you about yesterday. Aparently it was written specially for the film but it sounds to me like a classic piece...
The piano theme that I like so much doesn't come in till 1 minute 20:~~~~~~~
MUSIC FROM THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL
Yesterday I spent ages searching out a best version of Like a Prayer, because the music was going round and round my head. Here we have it:
MADONNA: LIKE A PRAYER LIVE (STICKY AND SWEET)
My favourite singers are Sinéad O'Connor and Barbra Streisand. I think the female voice is far superior to its male counterpart. I even read in the paper that men don't pay attention to women because the female voice is pitched to be interpreted by the male brain as music. Never heard so much cow-shite in my life, but who knows, maybe they have a point?
SINÉAD O'CONNOR: THIS IS A REBEL SONG
Don't be swayed by the title, as she points out, this is actually a love song:
And doesn't she look so much better with hair~??!
BARBRA STREISAND: EVERGREEN
From 1976 A Star is Born, featuring Kris Kristofferson:
Here is Elton John performing one of his old hits with the defunct boyband Blue. Usually I hate boybands ~ all that phoney heart-grabbing "I just want to get in your knickers" insincerity. Ukkh. But this is a good tune...
BLUE FT. ELTON JOHN: SORRY SEEMS TO BE THE HARDEST WORD
AND JUST SO'S THE DAY CAN BE COMPLETE, HERE'S A FUNNY PHOTO FOR Y'ALL
Chirpy miniature parrots love attracting attention in any way possible...
Some give their owner a good peck, while colour-coordinating nicely with their nails...
Others pretend to smoke cigars...
The one on the right loves practising his urban dance moves on luxury housewares ...
Headbutting meets with weary disinterest ...
Imagine his surprise when the shelf-stacker at Tescos opened a case of wine only to find this rainbow of feathery illegal immigrants gaggling in the box...
Upside-down entertainment ...
This pair go one better, chirping an inverted duet ...
A shock of colour can be shocking enough ...
Comfortably congregating for a conversation on the carpet ...
Cuddling up with kitty ...
After a hard day's showing off their glowing colours, the feathery entertainers need a well-earned nap ...
